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Student Life - July 2024

On the heels of camp this year for our student ministry, I wanted to take some time and share what happened in the lives of our students! First and foremost, praise God for the awesome week we had. I believe we hit a new record for the number of students that went to camp this year, which was 52. This means that 52 students were able to hear the Gospel poured out to them constantly over the span of five days by the incredible ministry of Crossings. I’ve already heard of a few stories of how camp this year had changed a few of the student’s lives or perspectives in their life. I truly believe that the Lord worked in the students' lives last week, and will continue to do so as time goes on. We also had seven faithful leaders serve our students during the week and give their precious time to Kingdom work. And for that, I’m incredibly grateful! I’m thankful we have many leaders that pour their hearts and souls into our students, sometimes weekly, and are still willing to go to camp and get less than desired amounts of sleep for the Gospel. 

While at camp, you quickly realize that it is an awesome and magical place. Not magical in a sense that camp is trying to trick or scam people into believing something. But Crossings camp is an amazing place that is solely centered around the Gospel for the Glory of God alone. Everything they do is connected to the Gospel and is designed in a way to point back to Jesus. When you have that level of commitment to the Kingdom of God, “magical” things can happen and the Lord can do tremendous works in the lives of people there. When you are at camp for the five days, you are disconnected from the outside world and you just get to focus on your relationship with the Lord; whether that be growing in your relationship or building one for the first time. Through some amazing worship by the Heartsong band to the faithful and piercing preaching of our camp pastor, I truly can report to you all that our camp experience this year was nothing short of amazing. However, the work does not stop there. It is our duty now to continue the Gospel and Kingdom work in these student’s lives. I really emphasize to everyone that once camp is over, do not continue on with normal life. If the Lord worked in your heart during camp, do something about it! Likewise, we as servants of the Lord shepherding these student’s lives, we need to continue shepherding them and growing them in the ways of the Lord and what He would have us do. 

So, with that being said, I’m happy to report to you that camp was awesome this year. We returned back safe and sound, with a bunch of memories and stories to tell parents and friends. Now we have VBS coming up and Middle School Mission Week on the horizon. We sure are busy, so keep an eye out for emails and info coming out about our future events! 

His Glory Alone
Alex Kilgore

Student Life - June 2024

Well, since my last article, our youth ministry has had a lot going on. We have concluded our Wednesday and Sunday night gatherings, went on a retreat to Crossings, had an end of the year party, celebrated seniors graduating and will soon be going to Crossings again for student camp. And now, I honestly share with you all that I believe the students really had a good time with these past events.

To start off, I'll share some of the cool things I noticed in the lives of our students from this past semester. Of course, I have only been in my position as Student Ministry Director for a little over six months, but I have already seen so much growth in these students. One thing that I loved and would look forward to would be the questions some students would ask about God. This could be theological questions, church history questions, or questions concerning Christ. But I loved all of these questions because they were genuine and you could see the gears turning inside their heads and for some of them inside their hearts. I would look forward after every Sunday night Student Gathering to sit in our lounge area in the student room and answer some of the older student's wild questions. "What happens if someone sees the face of God?" or "How could Jesus willingly give up His life if He is completely God?". Man, such rich questions from these young students. I'm happy to report to you all that our youth ministry is blessed to have some amazing leaders/teachers. They have done an awesome job working with these students and answering these questions as well. And then, this past week we had an end of the year party on Wednesday night to celebrate the end of the semester. The good news is some students brought their friends and we packed out the house! The bad news is I didn't buy enough hamburgers for dinner. But it was just awesome to see all of these students gathered together to play games outside, talk with each other, and for some specifically, laugh a little too much. It truly was a great way to end the semester.

I'm also happy to report that our retreat in the middle of April was a success! I had a good friend of mine from college be our speaker for the weekend and preach on how the students can have a correct focus of what to pursue in their lives. The speaker's name is Matt, but we called him either Tall Matt or Speaker Matt. One of those titles is obvious and the other is obvious when you meet him, he's just over 6'7". I knew Matt would be a great fit for the weekend, but he truly knocked it out of the park serving our students. Not only did he deliver great messages to the students, but he also sought them out during our time together and intentionally had conversations or hung out with them. Quickly and easily our students gravitated to him and apparently still text him. Oh how dangerous that might turn out, think before you give students your phone number, Matt.

Then, our church had the joy of celebrating and congratulating our graduates this past Sunday. In case you weren't there for one of the services, I'll share with you who our graduates were. We celebrated Tristan Kinsey, Savannah Koberstein, Sarah Lisembee, Brock Butler, Sydney Gotcher, Moriah Ingram, Jordan Mercer, Eli Schmitt, and Taliah VanDeWege. We said it at church and I'll say it here again, congratulations to all the graduates! Your hard work paid off and we are excited to see what the Lord has in store for you next!

Finally, our student ministry now has the summer to look forward to. The first trip will be a day trip to Holiday World in three weeks. Then in the month of June, we will be taking a huge group of students to camp. Currently, we have 48 students signed up and seven brave leaders. To my knowledge, this will be the biggest group we have ever taken. And apparently the students are excited for camp. All of our spots were taken within two weeks of registration opening. So, camp will be very
exciting and very busy, please pray for us.

 His Glory Alone